ADRIANO

Swiss-born conductor-composer Adriano lives in Zürich. As a musician he is mostly self-taught. In the late 1970s he established himself as a specialist on Ottorino Respighi and he has conducted many other recordings of obscure or neglected symphonic repertoire. He also initiated and recorded a series of fifteen CDs mainly of European film music composers, and created and directed a series of classical music videos. All of his recording projects (49 in total) have found wide recognition and his commitment is totally dedicated and uncompromising. In his opinion, music history should be revised to show that it is not just the story of the so-called great composers and that it should not be neatly classified into traditions and categories. Much more good music has been written than certain musicologists and critics would care to admit. Adriano’s compositions include Concertinos (with string orchestra) for celesta, for harpsichord and for Ondes Martenot; a Concertino for piano,strings and percussion, Obscure Saraband for organ, tubular bells, timpani and strings and a clarinet quintet entitled Thoughtsand Associations. His many instrumental adaptations include songs by Modest Mussorgsky (four cycles), Ottorino Respighi (five cycles), Johannes Brahms (Vier ernste Gesänge), Hugo Wolf, Othmar Schoeck, Jacques Ibert, Johann Strauss II and Louis Gruenberg. Ravel’s Tzigane (premiered in Halle’s Händel-Haus in 2013) also belongs to this list, as well as two different short versions of Antonín Dvořák’s opera Rusalka, one for seven instruments and one for wind quintet (both including five to six singers only), the latter of which ran for 53 performances in the theatres of Krefeld and Mönchengladbach. Adriano’s successful chamber group arrangement of Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune for flute, clarinet, harp and string quartet has been performed in Switzerland, Germany, Italy and England by renowned artists.